


Don't Get Kidnapped

by Dodoa



Series: Baker Street Boot Camp [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, Bored Sherlock, But he isn't above revenge, Gen, John is a Saint, Or Is It?, Prank Wars, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-06-10 17:05:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6965704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodoa/pseuds/Dodoa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of The Pool Sherlock decides that John is far too easy to kidnap and sets out to remedy that.<br/>But John isn't above revenge...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> So [scrub456](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scrub456/pseuds/scrub456) wrote [this ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5329781/chapters/15578413) and the idea of a series in which John and Sherlock train for their cases grew in the comment section... and this is the first installment. Enjoy!

The first time it happened was two weeks after the incident at the pool. John was walking home from the surgery when from the corner of his eye he saw fast movement in the alley to his right. He turned to look, but it was too late, he was tackled to the ground by a masked assailant. John tried to fight him off, but while he did get in a few good punches (the other man would be sporting an impressive shiner and a busted lip), his attacker had the advantage of both surprise and reach on him and eventually John was overpowered, face down on the concrete, his hands zip-tied behind his back. His feet got the same treatment after he managed to land a solid kick against his attacker’s knee, which made him hiss in pain.

John had to admit that his situation was more than a bit not good. He might have escaped his last two abductions relatively unscathed, but that was no reason to treat this cavalierly. Especially, since he had no idea who was taking him. As far as John knew Sherlock didn’t have a case on and that hadn’t changed in the eight hours John had spent at the clinic if the increasingly creative texts bemoaning boredom were any indication. Having no obvious culprit would make it more difficult for Sherlock to track him down, once he realised that John was missing, well _if_ he noticed. That probably depended on whether or not the agitated boredom from this morning had shifted over to sulking boredom yet. John hoped it hadn’t, because in that case Sherlock would probably notice in about fifteen minutes, when John didn’t arrive home on time.

Once John’s feet were secured the stranger turned him on his back again, so his bound wrists were digging uncomfortably into his lower back and ripped off his mask.

“That was abysmal!” Sherlock complained. Well, that answered one question. Agitated boredom, definitely agitated. Where did that absolute bastard even get these ideas when he was bored? Why couldn’t he do an analysis of all kinds of pens, or printer ink… there had to be something, Sherlock hadn’t analysed to death yet.

“Sherlock!? What the fuck, do you think you’re doing? And if you haven’t brought anything to free me, I swear to god, Sherlock, I’ll –”

“This was laughably easy”, Sherlock continued to rant, completely ignoring John’s outrage, “It’s no wonder you get kidnapped that often! I didn’t even have to draw the knife to subdue you! Anyone could just pick you off the street whenever they wanted! What did they teach you in the army?” Sherlock had tried to pace at the beginning of his little speech, but had given up on it when his knee protested. Probably sprained, judging from the angle of the kick he’d landed and the way he was keeping his weight off it, John thought. Well, served him right! The git certainly wouldn’t get any sympathy from him, especially since the way he was lying on his arms was slowly setting his bad shoulder on fire.

“How to sew people back together, mostly,” John answered deadpan, since that was the kind of answer that might surprise Sherlock out of his strop and therefore shut him up for a bit. “You know saving lives, that kind of thing. And did you just say you have a knife? What are you waiting for? Cut me free!”

“Well they completely forgot to teach you how to save yourself! How am I supposed to do my work, if you get yourself kidnapped every time some lowly criminal doesn’t like the way an investigation is going?” So that’s what this was about. John knew, Sherlock didn’t want to admit it, but the whole Moriarty debacle had shaken him. Well if this was how he dealt with that, by kidnapping John to make sure no one else did, John might even forgive him, as long as he hurried up with that fucking knife before his arm was rendered useless for the rest of the day.

“Lowly criminal? I really don’t think Moriarty qualifies as one and neither did the Black Lotus. Now use your damn knife and let me get up!”

“They might not qualify, but this most certainly does. I’m alone, my only weapon is a knife, which I didn’t even need by the way and I was being careful not to hurt you. Still, I would’ve had no problem whatsoever to abduct you quickly without anyone noticing. Now I know you can fight, but apparently that’s worth nothing when you’re taken off guard, so you have to pay more attention to your surroundings, or you’ll endanger the work!”

“Cut. Me. Free. Sherlock.”

John didn’t know whether Sherlock had finally heard the pain behind the anger, or just decided that keeping John tied up wasn’t entertaining anymore, but Sherlock finally complied.

“Careful not to hurt me, my arse…” John grumbled while gently massaging his shoulder. “The only reason I’m not punching you for this is that my left arm hurts like a bitch… and I already did, now that I think of it.”

“I… hadn’t considered the strain that position would put on the damaged tissue…” Sherlock almost looked apologetic, not about the whole attack of course, but at least that he hadn’t freed John sooner. “It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, as I said before, but you really need to be more careful, if that hadn’t been me, but someone else who attacked you, they wouldn’t be so considerate. Hurting you might even be their goal, so…”

“Yeah, point made, I’ll try not to get kidnapped again. Now can we please go home? You owe me a cup of tea.”

So they went home and Sherlock actually made the tea for once, John noticed Sherlock was still limping and wrapped up his damaged knee to stabilise it, Sherlock saw John hold his mug with his right hand and went to fetch an ice-pack and John told him to get one for his black eye and sprained knee too.

“And if you ever decide to test my awareness again, don’t wear a mask! I might end up actually hurting you.”

“Oh please.”

And so it began.


	2. Is that a Challenge?

Sherlock was bouncing on his toes, waiting for the UV-Transilluminator to light up the image of his gel on the computer-screen in front of him.

No! Not a single band! Except for the positive control, so he couldn’t even blame the failure on the PCR. A whole week of work, and nothing to show for it! He’d screened all 147 colonies of E. _coli_ that had grown on his Chromocult Coliform agar-plates with added ampicillin for plasmid selection and not a single one contained the plasmid he was looking for, with or without insert, and he still didn’t know who had broken into Victor’s lab at night, spilled a vial containing E. _coli_ transformed with said plasmid and stepped into it with street shoes.

Either none of the shoes he’d tested were the ones the burglar wore, or he’d just been unlucky, or maybe the burglar had noticed his misstep and autoclaved the shoes before Sherlock had got to them. Were shoes even autoclavable? Probably depended on the shoes. Maybe the culprit had doused them in alcohol instead. Or they’d just gotten rid of them. But then, Sherlock had checked all the relevant bins. On the other hand, maybe he really was just unlucky.

On top of everything else, he now had the rest of the day free, since he couldn’t start his experiment over until tomorrow or he’d mess up the whole timetable. Damn the time sensitivity of bacterial growth! In the meantime there wasn’t enough time to start anything else and half an empty day loomed ahead of him, replete with boredom and only the crushing failure of his experiment to keep him company. John was at work, using the week when Sherlock was occupied with his experiment instead of the usual kinds of cases for paying the bills and he wouldn’t be home that evening either, since he had a date. Sherlock didn’t know her name, since he’d deleted it after deducing that she was seeing three different men, the other two younger, wealthier and more prestigious than John and that she was shallow enough to care about that more than about their character. He’d debated over telling John, but decided against it after yet another lecture on the cruelty of speaking the truth. Deleting her name was the only bit of vindictiveness he had allowed himself. Also it would soon be superfluous to know it anyway, since by Sherlock’s estimate she’d probably dump John either tonight or the next time they saw each other, depending on how expensive today’s restaurant was.

Oh! Now that was an idea. It would fill the empty hours of today without extending into tomorrow and he’d been meaning to repeat that particular experiment anyway. He’d have to check John’s laptop, but with a little bit of luck, today wouldn’t be a complete loss.

Three weeks had passed since his last, far too successful attempt at kidnapping John. Long enough for the bruises to fade, the sprains to heal and John’s vigilance to wane. Today’s attempt would serve the dual purpose of both evaluating John’s watchfulness and giving it a boost if it wasn’t up to par.

A quick search of John’s e-mail account turned up his reservation and confirmed that that, yes, John would be dumped tonight. It was probably a bit not good to be happy about that, but it was going to happen sooner or later anyway and this way at least Sherlock would profit from the timing. And wasn’t it customary to distract a friend going through a break-up, or did that only apply to teenage girls? A lot of relationship advice on the internet seemed to be aimed at that particular demographic. Well, if that rule was applicable here, it turned the whole disaster into a proper win-win situation. Sherlock would get to continue his experiment without incurring (much of) John’s wrath, because he wasn’t interrupting a date and John would get a distraction. It was nice when things worked out like this.

Sherlock was in an alley close to the restaurant John had (badly) chosen, waiting for his date to be over. The restaurant was too close to Baker Street to warrant a cab and besides John always walked when he was upset. He’d only been lying in wait for half an hour, when he heard the unmistakeable pattern of an angry John’s footsteps approaching his hiding place. She hadn’t even waited until they’d eaten, then.

Sherlock waited until John was past him, before he slunk out of the alley he was hiding in and fell in step behind him, timing his steps with John’s so he wouldn’t hear him. John never even noticed.

He stayed behind John until they reached another narrow alley that served as a convenient shortcut to their flat. When they were halfway through, Sherlock quickly caught up to John and attacked. Before John even had a chance to fight back, he was already pinned to the ground, Sherlock’s knee pressing down between his shoulder blades.

“Tying you up in this position probably wouldn’t be good for your shoulder, especially if you struggle. So should we just skip that and you admit that I caught you off guard? Again!” Worryingly it had been even easier to subdue John than the last time. Apparently John was paying less attention to his surroundings when he was upset, than when he was tired. Anyone who claimed that sentiment wasn’t destructive was clearly an idiot.

“Yeah, whatever, just let me up, Sherlock.” Sherlock got off John’s back, before offering him a hand and pulling him up. They continued walking home, this time side by side, instead of one stalking the other.

“You know, I didn’t expect to win this time. I followed you for almost ten minutes before I acted, I didn’t even try to hide, if you’d looked over your shoulder, you couldn’t have missed me. I was absolutely sure you’d notice me.” John didn’t seem to appreciate just how badly he’d failed this time. Sherlock thought that maybe if he pointed that out to John, he’d take the whole matter more seriously.

But John just shrugged: “Yeah, I wasn’t paying attention, I thought you were at Bart’s, screening shoes for commercial plasmids?” Did John think that Sherlock was doing this for fun? Okay, fine, it was a little bit funny, but that wasn’t the point and it would cease to be funny at all if John didn’t improve. How was Sherlock supposed to concentrate on his work if he knew that anyone could just pick John off the streets whenever they pleased?

“Didn’t find anything, I’ll start over tomorrow. And me being at Bart’s is no excuse! You’re not supposed to pay attention because _I_ might try to kidnap you; you’re supposed to pay attention in case _someone else_ does!” John was finally starting to look gratifyingly chagrined.

“I know that. I’m more careful when we have a case on, but right now, who’d want to kidnap me? Anyway how did you even know I’d be here, I’m still supposed to be... Oh my god, you knew! You knew that she’d – Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know until I looked up where you were taking her. Also, the last time I told someone their relationship was doomed, you were angry at me, because it was cruel. Make up your mind! And we do have a case on. Possible industrial espionage.”

“No, you have a case on, which you only took as a favour and to get some practice with molecular biology in. What did you say about it? ‘Go to work John, the most dangerous thing about this case is the ethidium bromide’, which, by the way, I hope you handled with gloves. No one is going to kidnap me because of that case, Sherlock.” John did have a point about this case, but that didn’t mean that some other enemy of Sherlock wouldn’t take the opportunity to get their revenge.

“But –“

“And I doubt you’d do any better than me, if I tried to kidnap you.” Oh, that was promising! John could be rather competitive and he might be more inclined to pay attention if Sherlock turned the whole thing into a sport...

“Yes I would! I wasn’t the one who was kidnapped twice in one week.” A sport Sherlock would easily win at, obviously.

“Well, did anyone try to kidnap you lately?” Oh well, not exactly, but he had been assaulted a few times...

“I pay far more attention –“

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Believe what you want, you’re not clever enough to kidnap me,” Sherlock teased. He needed John to rise to the challenge. Once he’d unsuccessfully tried to kidnap Sherlock a few times, he’d hopefully realise that it was his own fault he got kidnapped so often and finally do something about that.

“Is that a challenge?” And there he was. Sherlock couldn’t help but grin.

“It’ll hardly be a challenge for me, but do your worst.”

“Oh I will, believe me I will...”


	3. Hands Off My Milk!

John came home to find that the milk he’d bought the day before had been aliquoted into 250 mL Erlenmeyer flasks. The flasks were stoppered with cotton wool plugs. The git was growing something in them then. Great. His milk was being used for microbiology instead of tea. John had been living with Sherlock for a full four months at that point, he wasn’t even surprised anymore.

However he didn’t fancy a repeat performance of his milk being fed to bacteria. Talking to Sherlock about it obviously wouldn’t help, but maybe there was another way to show his displeasure…

John had been working on his plan for nearly a month, maybe it was time to finally put it into action. The longer he waited the higher the probability of Sherlock finding out about it would be and it was crucial that Sherlock wouldn’t see it coming.

Sherlock wasn’t in the flat and he hadn’t texted with a new case, so there was a good chance that he was at Bart’s terrorising Molly. Which was exactly where John needed him.

_Hi, Molly have you_  
seen Sherlock?  
John

_Sure, he’s in the_  
morgue, do you want  
me to get him?  
Molly

_Thanks, if you could_  
just ask him if I can  
move the cultures  
on our kitchen table  
that would be great!  
John

_He said it’s fine as_  
long as you don’t   
jostle them too   
much and put them   
down somewhere   
with similar lighting  
Molly

_Oh and he said_  
sorry about the milk,  
does that mean   
anything to you?  
Molly

_Yeah, the cultures_  
I was talking about   
are growing on my   
milk. Could you text   
me when he leaves?  
John

_Sure thing!  
Molly_

After confirming that Sherlock was in fact at Bart’s and making sure that he would be informed when he left, John got ready. He changed into something that would be a bit less visible in a shady alleyway and he could move freely in. The second applied to most of his clothes, but there was still a difference between won’t hinder you and you’ll actually be comfortable while kidnapping your flatmate.

Then he grabbed today’s paper and took the tube to Farringdon and sat down in a little cafe on Cowcross Street, close to the alley he’d chosen for his ambush. Since Molly would inform him when Sherlock left Bart’s, there was no need for him to spend hours waiting in the alley.

It wasn’t quite true that it had taken him nearly a month to come up with a plan to kidnap Sherlock, in fact this particular scheme had been the result of about fifteen minutes of brainstorming plus a few hours of staking out the route between Bart’s and Farringdon station trying to find the perfect place for his ambush. Because when time wasn’t of the essence, like it was on cases, Sherlock did take the tube instead of relying on cabs, especially when he was bored. As far as John had understood it speed-deducing sometimes helped when his brain was going faster than the world around it. And Sherlock was bored. Not quite at the stage where John had to worry about their walls, but not that far off either. Hence his milk being experimented on. John was confident that Sherlock would be taking the tube today. So John would have roughly five minutes to get into position once Molly texted him and Sherlock started making his way to the station.

No, coming up with a plan hadn’t been overly taxing, the only thing that truly mattered was that Sherlock wouldn’t see it coming, after all. What had taken up so much time was deciding on which plan to use first. John didn’t want to lose, obviously, but he also didn’t want it to be too much of an overkill. Holding his gun to Sherlock’s head (empty of course) while he was in his mind palace would just feel like cheating and John wanted to savour the victory. He’d taken quite some time deliberating whether he should bring any weapons at all, since to John’s chagrin Sherlock had already taken him down twice using nothing but his own hands. So for his pride’s sake he should probably do the same. However, if John tried and failed to do it, he’d never hear the end of it. In the end, he’d decided to risk the humiliation, to make the victory that much sweeter. If it didn’t work, there was always a next time, after all.

John waited for almost an hour until Molly texted. Knowing how immersed Sherlock became when he was in the lab, he’d been prepared for more, but he was still glad that he’d brought something to read.

John had only been waiting in the alley for a few minutes when Sherlock strode past, not looking up from his phone as he passed John. John felt his own mobile vibrate in his pocket and congratulated himself for putting it on silent. He waited until he was sure Sherlock wouldn’t see his movement from the corner of his eye, but not long enough for him to get past the alley entirely, before he exploded into movement.

Three seconds later he had the man in what would be a blood choke if John were to apply just a little bit more pressure to his carotid arteries. Getting him there had been a bit tricky, considering their height difference, but John had learned this manoeuvre from someone even taller than Sherlock, so it wasn’t like this was the first time. He let Sherlock struggle for a few more seconds before announcing: “You’re unconscious.”

Sherlock paused in his struggles, incredulous. “No, I’m not,” he argued.

“You would be if I’d applied a bit more pressure, I win.”

“But you didn’t, so you don’t.”

“I can still do it, you know. You won’t get out of the hold, before –“ Sherlock used the distraction while John was talking to try and get free again, but John had been expecting the counterattack and held fast.

“Do you admit that I win, or do you really _want_ me to cut off the blood flow to your brain?” John knew he had won, by the way Sherlock tensed, then relaxed in his hold, but couldn’t resist adding: “I thought you of all people might take offence at that.”

“Fine,” Sherlock bit out.

“Fine, what, Sherlock?” John asked sweetly, not letting go quite yet, intent on enjoying his victory to the fullest.

“Fine I’m just as easy to kidnap as you, now let me go!”

“There you go, now was that so hard?” John finally released Sherlock from the hold, smiling widely.

“Yes,” Sherlock sulked, picking up his phone that had gone flying in the struggle. “You cracked my screen,” he complained.

“Sorry,” John winced, maybe he should have been more careful, on the other hand: “You shouldn’t have your face glued to that thing when you’re walking, though. You know, you might have noticed me, if you hadn’t,” he teased.

That made Sherlock light up again. “Of course I would’ve noticed you, unlike you I do pay attention when I’m not distracted!” he claimed, before remembering why he had been on his phone in the first place: “Besides, I was texting you. We have a case!”

“Why didn’t you take a cab, then?” John asked.

Sherlock stared, blinked, stared a bit more. “You always take cabs when you’re on a case, because it’s faster,” John explained. “You only take the tube when you’re bored. This is the route to the tube station, so you weren’t taking a cab,” John shrugged. “I might not be as observant as you are, but I do pick some things up. So why no cab?”

“Private client,” Sherlock finally managed. “They’re meeting us at Baker Street in an hour, there’s no reason to hurry.” He still sounded a bit shocked that John had made that connection. It was always nice when John managed to surprise Sherlock, especially if it was by noticing more than the man gave him credit for. This was turning out to be a great day, despite what had happened to his milk. Maybe he should try kidnapping his flatmate more often...

They started walking to the station in companionable silence until Sherlock broke it by arguing: “I still say I’d have seen you if I hadn’t been on my phone, you however, have no such excuse for your failures.”

“Well, we’ll see if you do better next time, won’t we?” John shrugged. He was quite confident that he could manage today’s feat again. After all, he still had five other plans on the back burner.

Sherlock hummed in agreement, though he added: “But first, it’s my turn.”

“What? But you already had two tries!” John complained.

“Evade my next attempt and I might let you have two in a row,” Sherlock was clearly enjoying himself just as much as John was. This was so much better than sitting at home being annoyed about the milk.

“Let me?” John asked incredulously. “You’ll _let me_ have two attempts in a row?” He snorted. “I’d like to see you stop me.” Sherlock was blinking at him again.

“Hm, taking turns would probably be counterproductive anyway, since this is meant to raise our awareness at all times,” he conceded eventually.

“Alright, so we just kidnap each other whenever we feel like it?” God, that sounded completely crazy when he said it out loud. John looked over to Sherlock and their eyes met, then they were both giggling.

“Not during cases though,” Sherlock said, when they’d gotten themselves under control again. “Since the risk of a real kidnapping attempt is higher then. If someone tries to kidnap you during a case, I don’t want you to waste time determining whether or not it’s me.” That sounded pretty reasonable.

“Okay, cases are off limits, anything else?”

“Make kidnapping you a challenge for me next time. It’s starting to get boring,” Sherlock smirked.

“Only if you do the same.”


	4. Two at One Blow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I was gone this long, but real life is kind of killing me right now and I was suffering from the worst writers block. Now that I seem to have beaten that I might even be able to get back to my longer, more plotty WIP.

Friendly kidnappings became quite commonplace after that. There was barely a slump between cases where neither Sherlock nor John tried, and most of the time succeeded, to kidnap the other. They’d both fared equally badly, until Sherlock had figured out that John usually tried to kidnap him, when he was annoyed with him and started deliberately goading John into doing it, when Sherlock was prepared. John had noticed the pattern of Sherlock’s kidnappings long before that (slight risk whenever he was bored, big risk when one of his plans fell through, like a case not keeping what it had promised or an experiment going wrong), but since the main trigger to prompt Sherlock’s attempts was unpredictable itself, that didn’t help John at all.

Of course John had started to change his pattern once he’d realised what Sherlock was doing (read: after Sherlock was done gloating about his success) and managed a few successful kidnappings again, but the damage had been done. Now, three and a half months after the first kidnapping and two months after John had officially joined the game, Sherlock was leading 9:6 in successful kidnappings and 2:0 in evading capture.

However, that streak was going to end today if John had any say in the matter. He had spotted Sherlock on the other side of the street when he’d left Tesco, arms laden with groceries and he was pretty sure the detective was following him now. John knew he’d probably attack when they were in the small alley that served as a convenient shortcut on the way home, as that was the only good place for a kidnapping on the short route. John knew that, because he had evaluated all of his common routes for those spots, both in preparation for his own kidnapping attempts and to better avoid Sherlock. Apparently all that work was finally going to pay off.

They’d also both raised the bar in terms of kidnapping methods, from bare hands (and theoretically zip-ties, but those never actually needed to be used after the first time) to minor weapons (mostly knifes but on one occasion there was a “Just pretend this isn’t saline, John”-syringe and in reply a “Pretend this is pepper-spray”-deodorant), so John knew he needed to be prepared for that kind of thing. That’s why he’d used a quiet hour at the surgery to sew a scalpel into the lining of his coat’s sleeve the previous week. Just before he turned into the designated kidnapping alley, he removed the loose thread that was holding the pocket closed under the pretence of checking the time, hoping Sherlock would attribute his fumbling to the shopping bags he was carrying, because if the detective realised that John had noticed him and was prepared for a fight, he might not try to kidnap him and therefore John wouldn’t have a chance of winning the round.

As soon as he’d turned the corner, John dropped his bags next to a bin, taking care not to make any noise that could tip Sherlock off, slipped the scalpel into his hand, quickly checking that the plastic safety cover was still secure (wouldn’t want to accidentally cut Sherlock’s throat) and flattened himself into a doorway. When Sherlock turned the same corner seconds later, John didn’t even give the detective enough time to realise that there was no John walking along with the groceries where there should be, before he attacked.

It was a short fight. Sherlock hadn’t anticipated an attack, which enabled John to relieve him of his knife, overpower him, get him in a secure hold and get his own scalpel in a position where, if it hadn’t been covered, it would be able to do a lot of damage very quickly. All in under a minute. Sherlock never had a chance.

“Well, that’s two points for me,” John stated on their way home. “What’s the score now? 7:9 and 1:2? I’ll get to you eventually!” he continued teasing the detective, who was currently carrying half of John’s shopping bags. “Oh, and you should try to kidnap me more often when I’m doing the shopping, if it gets you to help with the groceries.”

“Two points? You don’t get two points,” Sherlock interrupted his musings.

“Yes I do! I evaded your kidnapping attempt, which is one point and then I kidnapped you, which is another point,” John explained happily. He had to admit that he was being a tiny bit ridiculous, but the leftover adrenalin from their friendly fight was turning him giddy and he had just thoroughly beaten Sherlock, which wasn’t a small feat. “Maybe I should even be getting a third point for multitasking, but I’m generous, so I’m not insisting on that one.”

“Who says I was going to kidnap you? I was just taking a walk, minding my own business when you attacked me!” Sherlock claimed with a put on air of wide eyed innocence.

John couldn’t help but giggle at that: “Pull the other one, Sherlock! You were following me since Tesco.”

“No I wasn’t!”

“No, you were just walking right behind me for five minutes without noticing me,” John drawled. “You? Mr Observant? No, either you were following me because you were planning to kidnap me, or I’m going to be very mad at you for following me around and spying on me for no good reason. Your choice.” There was a dangerous edge to John’s voice now, daring Sherlock to insist on his story and live with the consequences. It was mostly put on, John did know that Sherlock was lying after all, at least in this case, but the invasion of privacy was just probable enough to make a bit of the outrage genuine and to make the act believable. And it worked.

“Fine, I was trying to kidnap you,” Sherlock conceded, “but you still only get one point for evading me, since in this particular scenario I was your would be kidnapper and not myself.” The counter-argument was delivered with just enough confidence to almost hide the fact that it was completely stupid. Almost.

“Yeah, that doesn’t make a lick of sense. I get two points,” John insisted.

“No you don’t! You captured your kidnapper and you could have interrogated them had it been real, but you didn’t kidnap anyone! There wasn’t any planning involved on your side!” Sherlock was just grasping at straws now, trying to salvage as much of his lead as possible.

“There doesn’t have to be!” John exclaimed in frustration, before explaining his reasoning: “Let’s say you’re following a suspect and he notices and recognizes you, just like I did and decides he needs to kidnap you before you can turn him in. No planning involved and if you’re as careless following him as you were with me right now, there’s a good chance he’ll succeed. It’s a perfectly reasonable kidnapping scenario. Therefore I get two points.”

“No you don’t.” Sherlock was almost pouting now. Sometimes it could be very gratifying to not let him get his way. When it didn’t lead to violin-torture, at least.

“Yes I do!” John responded in perfect schoolboy manner. If Sherlock wasn’t bringing forth any more arguments, they could the do-don’t back and forth forever as far as he was concerned.

Sherlock seemed to sense this, though, because he launched another attempt at logic: “It’s not in the rules!” That was quite a laughable argument, since all the other rules (not that there actually were that many) concerning the scoring, had been made up on the spot when something new had happened.

“The rules are whatever we decide! We already re-evaluated them once,” John argued and that was true. At first they’d just counted the successful kidnappings, since in the beginning there hadn’t been any other kind. When Sherlock had managed to evade a kidnapping for the first time, he’d argued that he had to get a point for that too, because otherwise there’d be no incentive to make every attempt count, since you could just try again the next day with no consequences whatsoever. John had agreed, because it did make sense and he wasn’t an overgrown child who couldn’t handle losing and needed the rules to always be in his favour, like some people. “You’re just sulking, because you’re scared you can’t do it!” Challenging Sherlock like this usually worked like a charm and this time was no exception.

“That’s ridiculous, of course I could kidnap you while you attempt to kidnap me!”

“Well, if you do, you’ll get two points.”

“Fine, just you wait.” Sherlock grumbled and that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really had fun with this chapter. It was nice writing something without having to use gender-neutral language for a change, which is a complete and utter pain in German, let me tell you.  
> Also, this chapter is further proof that comments nourish writers, because I wasn't writing anything non-academic for a while because I was feeling horribly uninspired and the first sentence of a new chapter seemed completely insurmountable and then someone left a nice comment here asking for more and it got me writing again. Still at a snail's pace and with long gaps inbetween, mind you, but without that comment there probably wouldn't be a chapter today.


	5. Reality Check

“Sherlock,” Lestrade smiled tiredly, when Sherlock entered his office. “I’m glad you could make it.”

“Not like I had a choice,” Sherlock grumbled under his breath. It had been a long and exhausting few days even for Sherlock’s standards and he’d much rather still be asleep. However, John had betrayed him by using his own lunchbreak at work to give his statement and now Lestrade was expecting the same of Sherlock. He really needed to talk to John about this. Every time the man behaved this accommodatingly, Lestrade got less patient with Sherlock. It hadn’t even been a full day since they’d caught the murderer and it wasn’t like Lestrade could finish his paperwork until he’d actually caught the smugglers. Not that that would take much longer. After all Sherlock had given him everything he needed to catch them last night, well, technically this morning, after handing over the murderer, who had been a dissatisfied customer. Despite that he’d still insisted on calling and waking Sherlock at an ungodly hour. Well, technically it had been almost two PM, but if you went by hours of sleep, it was definitely too early.

“Oh, don’t be like that, I’m sorry I woke you. At least you got more sleep than John.”

“Today maybe, but he didn’t stay up two nights in a row to learn absolutely everything about poison dart frogs.” At least it had been passably interesting even outside the confines of the case. Sherlock didn’t know if he’d been quite as willing to put in those night shifts if the murderer had been trying to buy some of the Greek pottery that had also been on offer.

“You – Why?” Lestrade sounded truly dumbfounded. Surely the connection had to be obvious, but judging by Lestrade’s face, apparently it wasn’t.

“Do I really need to spell it out? You were there when John told us what he’d found below the safe.” And hadn’t that been the best part of the case. Lestrade had presented them with what at the first glance had looked like a genuine locked room murder in the study of the victim, a professor teaching business law at UCL. Anderson would have ruled it an accident, victim stumbled and fell on his knife, if Sherlock hadn’t noticed the room safe let into the wall that was just big enough for a small person to squeeze into and the top of which had sounded hollower than it probably should. Actually getting the secret door of the safe open had taken hours and he’d been about to give up when inspiration struck. As it turned out the design of the secret door had been truly inspired. The top only opened once the front was locked which Sherlock had proved by locking in a flashlight and his phone which had filmed the top opening at the same time the electrical lock engaged, the humming of which covered the sound of the opening door. From there on it had been a matter of minutes to convince a reluctant John to let Sherlock lock him up in the safe, so he could explore the area above. Sherlock would have done it himself, but he hadn’t been able to fit his legs in the safe.

“There was a shaft leading to a couple of small rooms with smuggled contraband, but John said he couldn’t find any exits, except for the one he got in through and we couldn’t find any from the outside either, since we couldn’t get in the other flats without a warrant, which would have made seizing the lot tricky, so you asked us to wait, because – “

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock cut the inspector off before he could relate the whole case. “That’s not important right now. What were they smuggling?”

“All kinds of things, wait a sec I’m sure I have John’s list around here somewhere,” Lestrade murmured while already looking through the chaos on his desk. Except it wasn’t really chaos, as Sherlock observed, watching Lestrade uncover the torn-out notebook page covered in John’s writing in a matter of seconds. “Got it, so, Greek pottery and other antiquities John couldn’t identify, in various conditions, prescription pharmaceuticals, there’s a whole list…”

“Irrelevant, most of them can be used for recreational purposes, high value on the black market, go on.”

“Exotic animals, both dead and alive, looks to be mostly reptiles.”

“And amphibians like…”

“Frogs. Of course.” Lestrade sighed once he’d gone over the list of animals once more.

“Exactly! There was a whole bunch of them and the dust showed that some of them had been removed very recently, which told us that those had been the last thing that had been sold, probably to the murderer. I identified them from the pictures John took and then let slip to the right people that I’d like to purchase some. I was given the contact of Professor Esterl, a herpetologist, who just happened to have the very species I was looking for on sale. I scheduled a meeting at his office, posing as a student interested in participating in an upcoming research trip to the Costa Rican rainforest to study dendrobatids for my thesis and while I was having coffee with him John managed to get the information we needed from his office. As I thought he had been in contact with a customer who wanted to buy one of his frogs and the agreed upon meeting point for the sale was the crime scene at the time of the murder. We also managed to identify the rest of the group. It turned out that all four of them were teaching at UCL a few years ago and now live in the same building as the victim, but I already passed all of that on to you this morning.”

“After you went after the murderer on your own,” Lestrade grumbled. He’d never liked it when Sherlock shut him out and went off on his own, but sometimes that was necessary to get the desired results. (The rest of the time it was just more fun that way.)

“The murderer, yes. He was on his way to Heathrow when we caught up with him, though, so there wasn’t exactly time to wait for reinforcements.”

“Right, well, you know the drill, fill these out and you can go back to sleep.” Lestrade handed over a sheaf of papers and for the next twenty minutes they both worked in silence.

When all forms were finally filled out and filed according to protocol, Sherlock left New Scotland Yard behind and turned towards Saint James’s Park Station with a sigh. He debated just going back to sleep when he got home, but now that he was up, there was little chance of managing to fall asleep any time soon, no matter how tired he was. He probably wouldn’t get any work done either, though. What a waste of a day.

John would be home from the surgery soon, and since he’d spent his lunchbreak giving his statement instead of having lunch, he’d be hungry. It was about time for another gesture of goodwill anyway, so Sherlock thought he might as well pick up some takeaway for dinner. It wasn’t like Sherlock really objected to doing his share of the chores as John liked to put it, it was just that he forgot, well not quite forgot, there was just always something more important to do and by the time that was done, John had already done the dishes or the shopping or whatever needed doing and was grumbling at Sherlock about why it was always him that had to do those things. However, Sherlock had recently discovered that if he made sure to occasionally do some of the chores, John was much less snippy with him when he didn’t. He had to be careful not to overdo it to the point where John would expect it and would be disappointed when he didn’t, though, hence the scheduled gestures of goodwill.

Sherlock was digging his phone out of his pocket to text John and tell him that dinner would be waiting for him at home, when he noticed that the man walking behind him was slowing down together with him. Sherlock had been aware of him since he’d left the Yard, catching little glimpses from the corner of his eye, but he hadn’t really put much thought into it, since he was on his way to a tube station and it wasn’t too unlikely that they simply had the same destination, but this was suspicious. To test his theory Sherlock pretended to have difficulties texting and walking at the same time and stopped completely. The man stopped too, suddenly very interested in the shop window displaying make-up products, Sherlock had just passed seconds ago. He was almost definitely following Sherlock.

Sherlock hadn’t been able to make out the man’s face so far, since it was hidden beneath a hoody, but John was still supposed to be at the surgery, so unless he’d left early and significantly stepped up his game, completely disguising his gait and posture, this wasn’t a friendly kidnapping attempt. Sherlock quickly evaluated his route for potential places for ambushes and came up with a plan to turn the tables on his tail.

The first step was to make sure he didn’t run into a trap. There were two potential places where someone could easily be hiding in the shadows only emerging when it was too late for Sherlock to react. If an attack on him was indeed the plan, those were the spots where it would happen, whether his tail was working alone or with others. Sherlock would be avoiding those spots completely. Instead, he ducked into a shop right before the first potential trap, made sure his tail didn’t come in after him, preferring to wait outside, thereby reducing his risk of being spotted. But Sherlock never planned to leave by the front door. Luckily, he knew the owner, who was happy enough to allow him to use the back door. From there Sherlock snuck into the alley that would be an ideal hiding place for his potential attackers, placing him behind anyone hiding there. As it turned out, his tail was working alone, or at least the planned ambush wasn’t here, since the only one hiding in the alley, eyes glued to the street it opened into, was his tail. Sherlock managed to get almost all the way to him before he was noticed, so probably not a professional and when the man finally turned around, Sherlock was ready to attack. A short fight later he had relieved his would-be attacker of his knife and had him face down on the ground, hands zip-tied behind his back, since leniency towards potential shoulder injuries didn’t apply to kidnappers who weren’t John.

Turning him around, finally revealed the man’s face and with that his identity. Sherlock almost laughed out loud. It was Doctor Johnson, one of the smugglers of their last case, Lestrade would be so pleased to have the man practically delivered to his doorstep. One down, two to go.

The desire to laugh only lasted until Johnson opened his mouth.

“You’d better let me go, or your friend will regret it.”

John.

The last of the smugglers were probably going after him. And while Sherlock usually wouldn’t doubt that John could handle himself against two amateurs, not when Sherlock himself had had a hard time kidnapping him lately, right now John was tired, both from the sleepless night before and his day at work and likely less attentive than usual. Sherlock debated calling to warn him. There was a tiny chance that his call would be the thing that distracted John at the crucial moment if the timing was truly bad, but John should still be at the surgery, so the probability of that was low. It was actually more likely that they already had John, that they’d taken him on his way back from the Yard at lunch. He needed to know before he could decide what to do with his captive.

Taking out his phone Sherlock hoped that John was still able to pick up on the other end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the cliffhanger, the second part of this is already written and should be up tomorrow or the day after.


	6. Distraction Attempt

John was just finishing up with Mrs Cutrere, when he heard raised voices at the reception. He absentmindedly apologised to Mrs Cutrere while he was already getting up to see if he could help. Paul the new receptionist was sorely missing a spine and got easily flustered when confronted with querulous patients, which had ended in tears once already. Besides, any excuse to get up and move around a bit, before seeing his next patient, was welcome at the moment as last night was starting to catch up with him.

“Get me a doctor right now, you useless piece of shit!” John caught the last part of the enraged rant, followed by Paul’s stammering response: “But I – I’m not supposed to disturb –” and decided to step in before things got truly ugly.

“Hello, I’m Doctor Watson, what appears to be the problem?”

“The problem?” The enraged man now turned to John. He looked somewhat familiar, but that wasn’t important right now. “The problem? My friend might be dying out there, and this stupid little –”

“Alright that’s enough,” John interrupted. If this really was a medical emergency, every second might count. “Insulting people won’t help your friend either. What happened and where is your friend now?”

“Right outside, he just suddenly collapsed,” the man answered, much calmer now he was getting the help he’d demanded.

As soon as he knew where to go John was on his way out, not even breaking his stride to give some instructions to the receptionist: “Paul, send Sarah out with the defibrillator and everything else she can think of.”

“But –” the boy tried to interrupt.

“Emergency! Interrupt her.” John threw back as the door to the stairs was already closing behind him. He turned his attention back to the man, who had followed him, while they were jogging down the stairs: “Unconscious?”

“Yes,” came the immediate reply.

“Alright, does your friend have any medical conditions? Diabetes, a heart condition that kind of thing?”

“I don’t know,” another quick response gave John some hope that the man would be able to follow orders once they’d reached the patient. Helpful civilians were always a bonus.

“That’s okay, I’ll figure it out. What’s your name?” If they were going to work together, he couldn’t just call him ‘hey, you there’ and since they were only just reaching the front door, there was still time for the question.

“I – I – Um – Paul. Paul Smith.” The man, Paul, apparently, stuttered out, suddenly much more hesitant than with the previous questions. Odd, but not all that surprising, really, people reacted in strange ways to emergencies if they were not trained for them. Someone forgetting their own name wasn’t the weirdest reaction John had witnessed by far.

“And your friend?” John kept up the conversation, but only half listened to the answer as they were now outside and he could finally see his patient, stretched out on the pavement on the other side of the street.

“A – A – Alex, his name is Alex Jones.” Again, the stuttering. John wouldn’t have hesitated to put it down to nerves if the man on the pavement hadn’t been all wrong. John was almost there by the time he realised what his subconscious had noticed right away. The man, Alex, was stretched out on his back, legs straight, arms at his sides, head facing towards the sky. No one collapsed like that. Granted his friend might have moved him, but that didn’t account for the head. Unconscious heads didn’t lie straight like that, on a hard surface they always rolled towards one side, unless they were held in place. Whatever else was going on, the man on the ground in front of him wasn’t unconscious. Of course, he might have woken up while Paul had been gone, or Paul knew fuck all about first aid and hadn’t actually checked, which was likely because Alex wasn’t in a recovery position like he should be if he really had been unconscious. Together with Pauls quick switch from rage to compliance and his difficulty with their names when he’d answered all the other questions without hesitation and the way Paul just looked familiar, there were enough inconsistencies to put John on his guard, so when the attack came, just as he was leaning over the supposedly limp body of Alex Jones, he was prepared.

He easily caught the hand with the knife that had been hidden close to the body, as the man sat up suddenly, and twisted hard causing him to lose the knife. John had been clear headed enough to make sure that Paul was on the other side of the patient instead of behind him, which now allowed him to use the stunned man as a human shield while he put him in a blood choke that would knock him out for real in a few seconds. The two of them obviously hadn’t expected him to fight back this effectively and Paul didn’t think to attack while John was still crouching and preoccupied with the struggling man in front of him before the Alex went limp. John let him slip of of his grip and jumped to his feet immediately, just in time to block the attack from Paul, who had finally shaken off the shock and drawn his own knife. Without the element of surprise on his side, he wasn’t a very good fighter, though, and John had him disarmed and on the ground next to his friend before the other man even started to stir again.

John was just explaining the whole thing to Sarah who had come running out of the surgery, carrying emergency first aid supplies and expecting John to be treating an unconscious patient and had instead found… well this, and debating whether to call Sherlock or Lestrade first, because he had finally identified ‘Paul’ as Professor Esterl who he’d only seen for a moment before he and Sherlock had made their way to the staff kitchen, while John had searched the man’s office, when his phone rang.

Sherlock. Well, that resolved that issue. And if he was calling instead of texting, it had to be important.

“Sherlock, I was just about to call you!” John started trying to explain what had just happened, but Sherlock interrupted: “John! Thank god!” He sounded far more relieved, than John picking up his phone should warrant. “You have to be careful, at least one of the smugglers is going to come after you.” Well, that explained why Sherlock had been worried. Good thing John hadn’t needed the warning, though it stung a bit that Sherlock thought it was still that easy to catch him off guard.

“Yeah, thanks for the warning, bit late, but still. That’s why I was going to call you, actually, I’ve got two of them here, all wrapped up and ready for pickup and I was wondering if you wanted to have a look before I call Lestrade,” John was deliberately nonchalant about the whole thing, showing Sherlock that a little ambush, especially one this clumsy, wasn’t anything to worry about.

“I’d love to, but I can’t, I’ve got my own smuggler to look after until someone picks him up.” Sherlock sighed, adopting John’s attitude and forcing John to hold back giggles. Ambushes, so inconvenient.

“You too? Of course, that’s how you knew, isn’t it?” John realised.

Sherlock gave an affirmative hum, clearly pleased that John had figured it out.

“What did they want anyway?” John asked. It was obvious that the ambushes had been coordinated, but what the smugglers had expected to gain from it wasn’t quite clear to John. After all, the police already knew who they were.

“Mine was too busy trying to convince me to let him go, by threatening you, to tell me anything, thought I’d find out if he was bluffing before I continued the interrogation. But if you want my opinion, they know we’re on the case, but they don’t know that we already figured it out and handed everything over to Lestrade. They were probably trying to take one of us hostage to intimidate us to get us off the case.

“So it was a kidnapping attempt,” John grinned. “That means I get two points.” Which would put them at a tie regarding evaded kidnappings. He’d still be two points behind on successful kidnappings, but he’d been gaining on Sherlock lately.

“No, you don’t.”

“Don’t be like that, you get one too.” John teased, but Sherlock didn’t budge: “This wasn’t part of the game, so no one is getting any points,” he argued, then added: “And even if it was, you wouldn’t be getting two,” after a short pause.

“Two kidnappers, two points.” John focused on the less winnable part of his argument, knowing he’d likely have to concede that part and settle for just one point, but if Sherlock thought he’d won that argument he’d be far more likely to accept the rest of it, which would probably benefit John in the long run, since so far he’d been kidnapped more often than Sherlock, though admittedly, one of those times the criminals had mistaken him for Sherlock. And of course, there was another reason John wanted the kidnapping attempt to count.

“One kidnapping, one point!” Sherlock replied, not adding a disclaimer about not getting any points at all, which told John he’d already won.

“So I do get a point?” He enquired.

“No. It wasn’t part of the game!” Sherlock disagreed, though with less fervour than he had before. “And if both of us get a point, it doesn’t even change the score.”

“Maybe not this time, but what about next time?” John enquired. That’s why he’d started the conversation about their scoring system in the first place. He’d had a few ideas for kidnapping scenarios that would include more than just the two of them, as they’d pretty much exhausted the possibilities for solo kidnappings over the last couple of months and the outcome now usually depended more or less on the weapons each of them had at their disposal. John had been reluctant to put his plans into action, though, because there was a good chance that Sherlock would accuse him of cheating if he did so without discussing it first. He couldn’t just bring it up either, though, because then Sherlock would figure out what John was planning, which would completely ruin the element of surprise.

“Next time?” Sherlock scoffed. “You’re talking like you get kidnapped all the time!”

“Three times over the last six months, not counting you or Mycroft,” John deadpanned. “And if there’s no incentive, what’s the point in trying to resist?” He threatened jokingly.

“What’s the – John!”

“Oh, I’m sure you’d rescue me in time,” John teased. Now if he could just establish a precedent where a kidnapping attempt by someone else counted, he’d be on far better footing when it inevitably came to a fight about scoring after John put his plan into action without having to tip Sherlock off beforehand. “Or you could just let me have my point. Unless you’re scared I’m going to beat you, of course.” One little dig at Sherlock’s competitive side and he should have won, at least that’s how it had always worked so far.

“Please, let me just remind you of the score. With today’s points, it’s 13 to 11 for me on kidnapping and 7 to 6 on evasion. Clearly, you’re not winning.”

“I am gaining on you though.” John defended himself. “And you had a head start on the overall score, if you just look at the last month, I’m clearly better than you, by now.”

“No you’re not,” Sherlock scoffed.

“And still they sent two people after me and only one after you.” John couldn’t resist teasing his friend. “They obviously thought I’d be more difficult to kidnap than you.”

“That just proves once again that they aren’t very good at kidnapping people. They obviously figured that if I’m the brains, then you must be the brawn, otherwise what would be the point in keeping you around?” It would have been harsh coming from pretty much anyone else, but with Sherlock it was clear that he didn’t mean it as an insult. So John played along: “My ability to buy milk of course, clearly they didn’t bother to read the comment section of the blog. That reminds me, do you need anything from the shops? I’ll have to go anyway, if we want to eat tonight.”

“Actually, I was going to pick up dinner before I was so rudely interrupted.” John snorted. Only Sherlock would describe an attempted kidnapping as an interruption. “Any preference?”

“Why don’t you deduce it and surprise me?” John asked. Sarah was looking at him like he’d lost his marbles, and maybe he had, discussing scoring systems and dinner, while he was standing over two tied up would be kidnappers. “See you in a couple hours.”

Well, at least he wasn’t tired anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have three more chapters planned for this and the last of them will definitely be the end the story, so if there's anything you'd like to see before I get there, now would be the time to tell me so I can fit it in before that last chapter.


End file.
